Best Firefox Add-ons for Web Development

“ Firefox already comes with in-built tools for developers; add to that the power of Firefox add-ons and web development becomes more easier than before. FireBug, Web Developer, Yslow, and Greasemonkey are some of the add-ons available for Firefox that can be made good use of to ease the pain of web development. ”

By Geeta Tyagi

A major pain for almost all web developers is the complexities involved in the web development process including debugging, optimizing, coding, and validating. Developers in almost every web development company in India and abroad come across other challenges too that makes the situation more problematic.

A good news is that these tasks can be made simple by making use of tools within the browser; Firefox add-ons need a special mention in this regard. Most developers must be aware of then fact that Firefox comes with in-built tools for developers, additionally, with the power of the special add-ons that are available for Firefox, web development becomes quite lucid.

Let’s take a look at some of the best FireFox add-ons available for web development.

FireBug - Its indeed one of the most influential & popular Firefox add-ons. Firebug allows you to do a range of tasks like quickly finding errors, monitoring network activity, besides exploring DOM objects. You can even view & manage cookies without much of trouble. Featuring rulers and guides, its layout tab proves to be useful while working with CSS. Though it requires a good amount of memory, that’s a negligible requirement compared to the several benefits FireBug brings for you.

Web Developer - If you need a range of menus & tools for development, then Web Developer is the ideal add-on you should go for. If you require optimum control over code, then its recommended to use it in tandem with Firebug. With this add-on, you can easily edit CSS on the fly, thereby giving you the leverage to inspect & edit background, borders, padding, margins besides testing different fonts as well. In this, tasks grouping is done in intuitive categories like "CSS" or "Images. You can also use it to check if if a specific website is in compliance to web standards.

YSlow - It can be easily integrated with Firebug for analyzing & tuning the performance of webpages. For webpage performance optimization, it grades webpages and accordingly suggests the relevant tools that ensure faster page loading. Initially, YSlow crawls the DOM and fetches the components followed by retrieving information for each component. Further, the collected data is used to generate a grade for each rule, grade generation for different rules leads to the overall grade.

Greasemonkey - If you require making quick, effective changes to the content of a webpage, then Greasemonkey is the only Firefox add-on to consider. Just like CSS allows you have better control over the style of a webpage, this add-on’s user scripts provide you control over the page’s appearance. It also makes easier for you to edit websites as per your requirements.

Author: Geeta Tyagi

Geeta Tyagi is a digital marketing professional with a wealth of experience in Web Development, Designing, Web Analytics, Conversion Optimization, Software and Digital Marketing Technologies. She shares her expertise freely and is always pleasant to be around online. Her deep insight on every aspect of the brand as well as project management, has enabled her to carve a niche for herself within the industry. Her thoughts & actions with powerful analysis have brought significant improvements in the marketing strategy & processes.